… As part of its 11th five-year military plan beginning in 2006, China has: commissioned dozens of new frigates, destroyers, submarines and amphibious ships; begun sea trials of the country’s first aircraft carrier, the former Soviet Varyag; deployed ships overseas for the first time in modern Chinese history; and developed a “carrier-killer” system that combines ocean-surveillance satellites, drones and maneuverable Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles.

The past few years have represented a “coming-out party for China as a great power on the rise,” according to Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College analyst and author of an influential book series on the PLAN. …